Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES Every morning, as I begin my day with a cup of coffee, I take a quick glance at the three freshly-delivered newspapers on the dining table. Scanning the headlines, I always wonder how editors decide which news items to put on the front page for that day, and which ones to relegate to the inside … Read more
About a week ago, the head of the South African Medical Association, Dr. Angelique Coetzee, announced that she had recently seen a young man at her clinic who tested positive for what, on close examination, turned out to be a new variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Briefly called by the World Health Organization … Read more
President Duterte may go down in our nation’s history as one whose presidency was marked by the grandest promises and the most glaring failures. Yet, opinion surveys suggest that he may end his term with the highest approval and trust ratings among all our presidents since political surveys began to be conducted. This just goes … Read more
Presidents who have reached the end of their term have an understandable desire to influence the choice of their successor. They may differ only in the length to which they are willing to go to control the process. In this, President Duterte probably exceeds all previous presidents in his desperation to stake everything to get … Read more
Nothing is more illustrative of the current shape of Philippine politics than the recent celebrity wedding in Cavite of a daughter of actor-politicians Bong and Lani Revilla. The bride and groom were completely eclipsed by the cinematic casting of Sara Duterte-Carpio and Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. as the lead pair of 15 sets of principal … Read more
Laws prohibiting the buying and selling of votes have been with us for a long time. Yet we have probably not heard of anyone who has ever been convicted of this electoral offense. That’s because it’s not easy to prove it. Neither the buyer nor the seller would have any motive to file a complaint, … Read more
Going by the common belief in the law of averages, the pessimist in me worried that COVID-19 could anytime inflict a fatal blow on our large family. I used to tell myself how lucky we were that the few in our family who tested positive at different times since last year experienced only mild symptoms. … Read more
“Dutertismo” is a term I coined in a column I wrote shortly before the 2016 presidential election (Public Lives, 5/1/2016). I used it to refer to the Philippines’ own version of the phenomenon that came to be known as “Nazism” in Hitler’s Germany, and as “Fascism” in Mussolini’s Italy. The more current name for these … Read more
In the time of our elders, when we were just starting out as a young self-governing nation, those who aspired to lead our country felt bound to a code of political statesmanship by which they measured their eligibility for public office. They looked at themselves, so to speak, in the mirror of political virtues to … Read more
That was a powerful speech Leni Robredo gave the other day. It was short, simple, and filled with formidable images that depict the situation our people find themselves in today. It gave the electorate a clear idea of why she’s running for president and why the nation desperately needs someone like her at this time. … Read more